Design of Agri-Environmental Schemes – evidence from the monitoring and evaluation GLAS in Ireland

The Green Low-Carbon Agri-Environment Scheme (GLAS) is the main agri-environment scheme (AES) in Ireland, funded under the CAP rural development programme (RDP) 2014-2020. GLAS was designed to support and encourage more sustainable production practices at farm level and underpins a range of over-arching environmental objectives as set down in EU Directives and National and International Strategies. AES have been widely used as a policy instrument to deliver environmental protection and enhancement on commercial farms, above and beyond the regulatory baseline. To be effective, this requires a number of individual land managers within a given landscape or catchment to voluntarily participate in schemes and select and implement an appropriate mix of actions over time. There is a wealth of literature on the design of agri- environmental schemes based on theories of behaviour change (scheme uptake and attitudinal change) and how to affect environmental change (effectiveness of actions at site and landscape scale). This paper considers both. In 2015, ADAS and Scott Cawley were contracted to undertake the monitoring and evaluation of GLAS to evaluate scheme structure, composition and effectiveness. The approach started with a detailed literature review of the existing research on agri-environment measures in Ireland and the development of a sampling plan and protocols for a longitudinal (5 year) field-based assessment of GLAS actions targeting biodiversity. Actions for water and climate change are being assessed through a modelling approach, using FARMSCOPER, a decision support tool to assess diffuse agricultural pollutant loads to water and air. The work also includes an attitudinal survey of the GLAS sample farmers as well as a counterfactual group (non-participants) to understand farmer motivations to participate in the scheme, secure feedback on their experience and identify influences of participation on environmental behaviour. Critically, all elements measure change over time (3 field surveys and 2 attitudinal surveys) and include a baseline assessment, while the evaluation of motivations and influence on attitudes is an important element for a voluntary scheme. A desk-based evaluation of GLAS will provide evidence of scheme impact for the 2019 enhanced RDP reporting and make recommendations for future agri-environment schemes. The baseline field survey has been completed on a sample of 313 farms, using ‘Measures of Success’ for 26 actions to assess site condition and action implementation. Bird actions and simple habitat actions were generally well implemented and most measures of success were met but this was less so for more complex habitat actions. The attitudinal survey found that half of scheme participants were part-time farmers, mainly cattle rearing (37%) and mixed livestock farms (31%) and key reasons for participation in GLAS were financial. For water and climate change, the model development provides a spatially explicit baseline assessment of pollutants. Catchment scale impact is based on action uptake by farm type for each WFD waterbody at Ireland level. Nationally 32% of agricultural land is in the GLAS scheme but only 13% of farms are specialist dairying and this is expected to limit the contribution to mitigating the impacts of agriculture on water quality and climate change.